


Flame and Fortune

by PumpkinWrites



Series: The Greatest Shows On Remnant - RWBY Circus AUs [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, Animal Trainer Adam Taurus, Con Artists, Conjoined Twins Corsac and Fennec Albain, Crushes, F/F, F/M, Fake Fortune Telling, Fire Dancer Cinder Fall, Fire Dancing, Fortune Teller Emerald Sustrai, Gen, Snarky Ringmaster Roman Torchwick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 08:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13922982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinWrites/pseuds/PumpkinWrites
Summary: Welcome to Circus Salem. Beyond its gate, you will find a strange, exotic world of wonder and intrigue. From its collection of sideshow performers and living oddities to the incredible feats only witnessed under the big top, you will surely find something that terrifies and amazes you.Or, in Emerald Sustrai's case, someone who you just cannot stay away from.





	1. Chapter 1

Emerald had been to the circus only once as a child. She'd sneaked in behind a mother and two young boys right before the show had started and watched from beneath the bleachers. She remembered acrobats tumbling through the air, and a man who held fire in his hands. A troupe of clowns in their bright costumes, waddling around the ring and drawing roaring laughter from the crowd. An elephant who stole things from the ringmaster during the opening of the show, and from its trainer during their act.

But, more clearly than anything else, she remembered an overwhelming happiness. One the likes of which she could never recall feeling before, or even since, that day.

The massive, red-and-white striped tent was situated between the train yard and the boardwalk, only a short walk from the docks, where Emerald had been camped in an alley between two warehouses. A large portion of the surround land was fenced off, some of it apparently open to the public and some seemingly reserved for smaller tents used by the performers.

She had walked by the grounds when they had first come to town earlier this week, spying several performers out front to attract visitors. A boy with silver hair was juggling so effortlessly that it looked as if he'd been born doing it. Two twin girls with dark hair, one dressed in red and one in white, were performing acrobatic tricks off of boxes and posts set up for them. A large, dark-haired man with a beard wasn't performing, but he was calling out to passers-by to get their attention. And a woman in a red dress was twirling a baton, alight at one end, even passing her hands through the flame and emerging unburnt.

It wasn't the fire that had drawn Emerald to the woman. In fact, normally, the fire would cause her to stay away. But it was just something about her. The way her dark, braided hair rested over one bare shoulder. The way the flames illuminated her golden eyes and seemed to dance in their reflection.

Emerald was terrified to admit it, but... she was in love.

She had been sneaking down here ever since, peeking over the flimsy, temporary fence to catch even a glimpse of the world beyond it. Most days, she went unnoticed, but she had been caught and shooed away by a few different performers at this point. But she kept coming back.

She hadn't seen all that many of them the past few days, but today, performers of all kinds, all in various states of casual clothing, were wandering around, chatting with one another, passing between various small tents and animal pens. She clearly spied the silver-haired juggler, talking animatedly with a pair of faunus a few yards away from her. A red-haired young man with bull horns was perched on another temporary fence, eating a sandwich and petting a large black panther behind the ears.

But nearest to her, the dark-haired woman she had come to see was standing in the center of a dirt patch. She was spinning two batons, each flaming at both ends. Several other performers were watching her practice, chatting among themselves. The woman seemed to pay them little mind as the batons danced in her fingers, twirled and tossed and caught. Emerald stretched higher on her tiptoes, the crate she was perched on shifting slightly under her weight. Red eyes stayed glued to the woman, too hypnotized by the flames and by her beauty to look away. Far too distracted to hear footsteps behind her.

"You again?"

The voice caused her to whip around in surprise, toppling sideways off of the crate. As she landed hard in the dirt, she looked up at the small crowd of people who had approached without her noticing. The dark-haired barker, who'd caught her twice this week, led the pack. Behind him, the twin acrobats, a tan-skinned man dressed in black and green, and another man who wore a cloth surgical mask over the lower half of his face. The men were all similar kinds of massive, the barker less visibly-muscular than the men who flanked him but still tall and broad.

"I told you the last two times, little girl. If you wanna see the show, you'll have to buy a ticket," the barker started. The other large men squared their shoulders and folded their arms, as if trying to make themselves look even bigger. Not that they needed it, they already looked massive. "If you don't intend on doing that, _leave_."

"Oh I..." Emerald thought quickly, looking away for a moment. How could she get out of this? The quiet men looked terrifying, and she feared what they would do if they caught her here again after this. "... I was... looking for a job, actually."

"... a job," the man repeated slowly. "... what skills do you have?"

"I uh..." She thought back to all the ways she'd tried to earn (or steal) money to pay for food over the years. One in particular came to mind, and she blurted it out before she could stop herself. "I'm a fortune teller."

For about two weeks, a couple years ago, she had set up near a park with street performers and pretended to tell fortunes with playing cards, making her victims see exactly what she described, even though the cards didn't always line up with what she said. She could do that again, fool one person at a time that way, right? She'd have to make up an excuse to get new cards, though. What else had she seen people use? Crystal balls... mirrors... bowls of water... she could work with something reflective.

The man was silent, looking around at each of his companions, who merely shrugged, or gestured, and didn't give any sign that they did or didn't believe her. It was, Emerald knew, a tough claim to disprove, but it was also a tough one to prove. The barker seemed to know it as well. He finally sighed, addressing his group aloud and folding his arms across his chest.

"... you boys head on back to your tents. Mel, show her inside. Mil, go scrape Roman out of wherever he's hiding, tell him he's got an audition."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been calling this series of events "Emerald Sustrai is too gay to function," but it's more like "Emerald Sustrai is thirsty."
> 
> My friend dragged me into "The Greatest Showman," not that it was difficult to do, and we have another friend who actually toured with Ringling Brothers for a time. How could I not use this interest and a perfect resource? Because that individual is normally busy, however, a lot of things shown or mentioned will probably end up being taken from media. Currently, a couple lines in Chapter Two are directly inspired by American Horror Story: Freakshow.
> 
> Rating is subject to change as the story progresses, but it's sitting pretty at being "E for everyone" right now. Tags and relationships will be added as they come up.


	2. Chapter 2

"Mel," the white-clad twin with the longer hair, wasn't much of a talker, it seemed. She'd led Emerald into the main tent, then perched on the wooden bleachers. She popped open a compact mirror to fix her mascara, otherwise ignoring Emerald's existence. Emerald herself took the time to glance around, take in her surroundings.

There wasn't much in the tent at the moment, some half-destroyed hay bales, a few ropes hanging from support poles. Certainly nothing she could use to help further her illusion of being a fortune teller. What could she say to convince whoever she needed to that she wasn't a fraud: wouldn't someone looking for a job bring their tools with them? She looked down at her hands, and it hit her. Palm reading! Fortune tellers read palms all the time, and most of those readings were so vague to start with that she was sure she could work with it.

Alright, time to think. Best case scenario, she fooled whoever she needed to, and joined the show. The worst case was she was discovered as a fake, and turned away. And then she'd never see the fire dancer again, because she would be almost certainly "dealt with" in some way if the barker caught her again after this.

"--not the only talent scout we've got around here, y'know."

"Well, you're not busy."

"Actually, Miltia, I _was_ busy!"

The two voices drifted in from just outside the tent, causing Emerald to look up and toward the flap. Her babysitter snapped her compact closed and rising gracefully to her feet. She rested a hand on her hip before calling out to them. "Torchwick! Maybe stop complaining and just come get it over with!"

The shorter-haired twin finally wandered into the tent with an irritated-looking man on her heels, and once he caught sight of Emerald, he waved the twins off. "Alright alright, you two go back to whatever Junior has you doing for the afternoon. We open at five tonight."

"Why five?"

"Why _not_ five?" the man countered. "Now scram."

The twins scowled, but turned and left the tent. Now that Emerald had a good look at him, she didn't think she'd have much of a problem fooling the man. This "Torchwick" was a tall, redheaded man with a white jacket draped over his arm and enough smudged eyeliner on his exposed green eye that Emerald was almost sure he'd taken a marker to his face. The messy state of his hair and makeup, and the ruffling of his clothes, told her he'd been interrupted somehow.

"Fortune teller, huh?" he greeted, eyeing her suspiciously.

"I didn't choose the gift," she recited. It was a line she'd once heard a fortune teller use in a movie that she'd snuck into. "It chose me."

He glanced toward her empty hands, and his visible eyebrow raised. "What do you use?"

"I can use playing cards, or anything reflective, but my bag with my tools in it was stolen. So, I'll have to read your palm, if that's alright."

Torchwick still looked skeptical, but he nodded a little bit. He turned one hand over, holding it out to her. She studied the lines and the callouses, though she could tell that he did, apparently, make every effort to reduce those. Moisturizing, if she had to guess. But working here, she could imagine that everyone had them to some degree. If this went well, she'd have to get a book on palm reading, it seemed like the easiest trick in the book.

"... I see many dark tidings," she started. "... in the past, you suffered a grave injustice, because of greed and jealousy. ... I see a woman. An overbearing presence... she's dark, and demanding... your mother?"

When he gave no response, merely shifted in place, she cleared her throat and continued.

"... she sabotaged every relationship you ever had... because she was jealous of those girls. She couldn't stand the thought of you marrying one of them. But now that she's gone... I see another woman. She's tall and elegant, everything your mother always wanted to be." Emerald looked up at him with a practiced smile. "You'll find love, despite everything she did."

Torchwick was silent, and for a blissful few seconds, Emerald was sure she'd done it, tricked him into believing even a word of what she'd said. But then he pulled his hand away and brushed his fingers through the hair covering his eye.

"... You're not foolin' anyone here, kid."

At Emerald's confused look, he leaned back, producing a cigar and a lighter too fast for her to see where they had actually come from. He lit up and tucked the lighter away, blowing smoke politely away from her before he continued speaking. "For starters, that overbearing mother you talked about? Well, I'll have to hand you that one: that'd make a hell of a movie. If it hadn't already been done."

"... what?"

" _Psychosis_ is a pretty iconic movie, kid. That plot point's usually overlooked, people are a little more focused on the murder and all, but it's still a pretty big part of the movie."

"I-I..."

"Secondly, my mother never actively sabotaged my relationships. Can't really picture her caring whether I was seeing someone or not. And she's probably not dead, I'm not that lucky."

Emerald held up both hands, sighing and looking down. "... alright alright alright. Fine. You caught me. Just... please don't tell anyone about this, I'll leave..."

"Not so fast, kiddo. You're no real fortune teller, _but_ with a little practice, you might even make me believe it someday."

She blinked, continuing to look him over suspiciously. When she didn't say anything, Torchwick shot her a winning smirk, gesturing toward the entrance of the tent with his cigar. "... we might have a spare tent for you, it'll take a while to find it in the supply car. No time to set you up to debut tonight, but that'll give you time to head home and uh, pack up whatever you'll need to travel with us. We're here til the middle of next month, then we head to Mistral."

"... wait, I got the job? I thought you said I wasn't a real fortune teller?"

"Oh, you aren't. Not in the slightest. But after about a week of work, you'll do just fine trickin' the masses out of their pocket change, at least. Couple tips, though, don't spit movie plots up thinking they're what people want to hear, and not everyone's looking to hear about love. And speaking of tips, as for your pay, how's... hm... forty percent of whatever you bring in sound? On top of the minimum pay rate of course."

"... they're paying me, don't I get to keep all of it?"

Torchwick chuckled. "I respect that, kid. But they're paying the show. And the show pays _you_. At least half of what you make during show hours goes to back into the show. Call it supplies, and room and board. But looking at you, I bet a tent out of the rain, three square meals a day, and access to the mess tent whenever you want sounds pretty appealing on its _own_ , don't you think?"

Emerald's mouth worked in silence.

"I'll take that as a yes." Torchwick simply dropped his cigar, crushing the burning end under his heel to put it out as he stood up. He offered out a hand, one that Emerald took and shook hesitantly. "Got a name?"

"... Emerald. Emerald Sustrai."

"Alright, we can work with that. Welcome to Circus Salem, kid. I'll show you around."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning Emerald's fake fortune to Roman is a literal rewrite of part of Maggie's speech to Elsa in American Horror Story: Freakshow, because I wanted to emphasize the point that she was just spitting up things she'd heard fortune tellers say. In fact, Roman's line "that would make a great movie, if it hadn't already been done" is another callback, this time to Elsa telling the twins to get their stories straight.
> 
> Psychosis is an obvious callback to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, as is the theme of a mother who negatively impacted her son's love life.
> 
> I'm gonna try to not make such overt references in the future, but I couldn't resist.


	3. Chapter 3

She followed Torchwick through the grounds, barely listening as he spoke and gestured to nondescript-looking performers, both human and faunus alike. She was introduced to a few clowns, out of costume mostly, and to a few strange-looking people that Torchwick referred to as "oddities," who she would learn (after meeting five or six of them) were sideshow attractions: "freak show" performers. Everyone she met had seemed really excited to meet someone new, and despite the strange features some of them sported, Emerald almost instantly felt comfortable with them.

On the other hand, for some reason, just being near Torchwick was unnerving. He didn't do anything to make her uncomfortable, he seemed friendly enough and had a bright grin plastered on his face the entire time. But it didn't reach his eyes. Emerald wasn't great at reading people, but she was sure that that meant it was fake. His expression didn't change at all as he interacted with different people though, she supposed that that was good.

When they finally reached the part of the camp she had been watching when she'd been caught, Emerald's shoulders slumped a bit, disappointed. The fire dancer was no longer practicing in her dirt patch. The silver-haired juggler was gone as well. The red-haired young man, however, was still sitting on the fence, with his panther leaning up as if to get a bite of his food. The upper half of his face was obscured by a white mask with red detailing, the eye slits so narrow that not even his eyes could be seen through it.

The man with the surgical mask was leaning beside him against the fence, talking too quietly to be heard properly. The only reason Emerald knew he was talking was because he was making subtle hand gestures and nodding his head, which the red-haired one acknowledged with nods of his own, and returned gestures.

Torchwick seemed to notice her looking toward the masked men, and detoured. He stopped beside the fence, waving Emerald toward them. "And these are our animal trainers. That's Adam Taurus, and uh..."

The horned man nodded, and the panther poked its head up over the fence a little more insistently, prompting its trainer to scratch its ears. However, it merely leaned up to grab hold of his sandwich and disappear back behind the fence. "Bella!"

"Ah, Bella, right. And that's uh... Sharkface."

"... Pelle Carcharias," the larger man corrected as he turned fully toward Emerald. Now that Emerald was less terrified of him, she could see that he had tattoos on his left arm that looked quite like the markings on Adam's mask. "But... Sharkface is fine."

"Gentlemen, this is our new fortune teller."

Emerald nodded, looking from Torchwick to the masked men and biting back the urge to ask what had earned Sharkface that nickname. "... I'm Emerald."

"That a stage name, or your real one?" Adam asked bluntly.

"She's not ready for a stage name quite yet, so we're keeping the real one for now," Torchwick answered for her, then glanced back at Emerald. "Adam works exclusively with the big cats. Sharkface on the other hand has a whole mess of 'em. Got left with the elephants when their original trainer left. So he's got them, the horses, and the zebras."

Emerald looked between the masked men again, still wondering about Sharkface's nickname and also sorely tempted to ask if the cat trainer had tigers, but she was interrupted by a shout from behind them of, "ROMAN!"

Torchwick sighed loudly, his jovial attitude dropping for a brief moment as he scowled. He turned around a half second after Emerald did to face the dark-haired barker, the tan-skinned man from before, and the juggler. The silver-haired boy winked at Emerald, but didn't say anything.

"What now, Grizzly Bear?"

"First of all, don't call me that. Second of all--" The barker's eyes found Emerald, and he raised an eyebrow. "... so she was the real thing, huh?"

"First of all, I'll call you whatever I want, Grizzly. And you could be a little nicer to the new hires, y'know." Torchwick, who was apparently the "Roman" that the barker had referred to earlier, waved vaguely in the men's direction. His grin was back, but it seemed even further from his eyes than ever. "Kid, this is Hazel Rainart, our strongman. That's Mercury Black, he's a juggler and specializes in equilibristics. And the loudmouth is Junior, he's our sideshow barker and one of our crowd favorite clowns."

Emerald hid a smile behind her hand. It was hilarious to imagine the large, loud man in clown makeup and costume. But she supposed that was the point.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want," Junior scowled, then turned to Roman again. "Cinder know you hired someone else?"

"Haven't found her to let her know, and if we're being fair, she's made several hires without talking to me." Roman had taken advantage of the moment to light up again, tucking his lighter into his pocket and focusing on Junior. "If it's the Albains and Tyrian again, I'm not dealing with it. That's your problem. I deal with enough without those two. Three. Is it two or three?"

"You're an ass."

"Have to get the jokes in when you can, you of all people should understand that."

"Time and place. You seen your little shadow today?"

"Hm? Not since this morning, but she's been busy."

"Yeah well, that's because she's sitting out by the mess tent with the twins, in a state."

The statement actually seemed to visibly disturb Roman, whose smile dropped again as he took his cigar out of his mouth and tapped ash off of the end of it. He didn't say anything, and Junior continued.

"Watts isn't around and he's the only one who signs around here other than you, so we have no idea what the hell her problem is."

After a long pause, Roman glanced sideways at Emerald. His face was still blank, but he took a drag of his cigar and carelessly blew smoke in Junior's direction before speaking. "... hungry, kid?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry these chapters are so short, but I'm neck deep in a really bad depression spell and writing and updating as fast as possible is keeping me from just sitting on my couch under a blanket doing nothing. That being said, obviously uploading at this speed means that it's entirely possible that there are errors that I missed before posting, sorry about that. They'll probably be fixed when I notice them.
> 
> Trivia time: "Sharkface," while a blatant reference to Red VS Blue, also comes from the character's last name. Carcharias is the species name of the Great White Shark. His first name, Pelle, is Italian for leather. I've also called him "Leatherface," as that's my headcanon name for him.


End file.
